Thomas Birch was the son of an engraver and miniaturist, who emigrated with his father from England to Philadelphia in 1793. Although he started out as a portraitist, he soon found his calling as a marine painter, credited with establishing the popularity of American ship portraits.

Birch often painted in the areas of the Hudson and Delaware Rivers, likely the locale shown in this idyllic scene. The additional staffage of a Native American drifting on the placid waters in a canoe, being hailed by another in the foreground adds a sanitizing element to the far less harmonious relationship that existed between the colonizing forces that had displaced the indigenous peoples of the Americas.